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Entrepreneur
Al Linke is the Santa Clara, Calif.-based creator of Pixeled, an
LED-based display for pixel art. To showcase a low-resolution
masterpiece, users open a free Pixeled app on an Android device
or a PC and tap the image or animation they want, sending it to
the framed display via Bluetooth. When not in use, the Pixeled
display looks like a mirror.

"Illuminating" moment
"I'm a techie, but a wannabe artist," says Linke, whose day job
is IT director for a Fortune 500 company."If you follow the whole
maker and open-source movements, there are a lot with LEDs, but
you need to be techie to do a cool LED project. The vision was to
create [one] anyone could do. It's as simple as picking an image
from your smartphone."

Electric light orchestra
Think of it as an open-source Lite-Brite."There's this whole
culture around pixel art; it's the whole retro thing," Linke
explains."There's this movement around low-res, 8-bit art." He
commissioned various pixel artists worldwide to design their
bright ideas; developers can create their own applications using
Pixeled's open-source software-development kit.

Images ranges from a gumball machine, pretzel or squid to
animations of falling rain or space scenes. There's a proximity
sensor behind the mirror for interactive animations--e.g., a
smiling face that sticks its tongue out when someone gets close,
or a Magic 8 Ball that fires back answers to burning questions.
Additionally, users can display images they've drawn on an
Android phone or tablet or a PC by saving it to one of Pixeled's
app folders.

Feel the glow
"This is a hobby that turned into a product," says Linke. He and
a friend spent six months developing a prototype in their spare
time, with Linke fronting $3,000 of his own cash. They then
posted the project to Kickstarter, raising more than $51,000 from
303 backers.

Lighting up
Linke is focused on getting the product out to the Kickstarter
backers so he can use their feedback to improve the current
version and develop the next. He is working on a full-scale
distribution strategy; meanwhile, Pixeled is available through
the open-hardware market Seeed Studio fully assembled for $259 or
in a DIY"Guts" version for $185.

Up next
Linke started with Android because Apple isn't very"hobbyist
friendly," he says. He's working now on an iOS app.